12,000,000 Syrians have fled their homes. A third have become refugees. Photographs of children’s corpses in Greece have surfaced, as have images of the terrible conditions of camps in the Middle East and Europe. The latter has scrambled to cope with the influx. Hungary and Slovakia have shut their borders, while other countries like Slovenia have begun to regulate them. Since the Paris attack, the Syrian refugees have dominated discourse in America, too. Many hold the refugees accountable for the actions of the very terrorists they are running from.
Fortunately, not all is hopeless. Angela Merkel, the “mutti” of Germany, has embraced them despite opposition from a rising Far Right. Nations like Merkel’s and Sweden have accepted generous quantities of refugees. The Democratic candidates here at home agreed in the last debate that the United States should accept more. Wind power companies have agreed to power refugee camps in Jordan. Medtronic is deploying cardiology and spine surgery services to hospitals in Amman, and Pilosio has committed to building temporary schools in Turkey and Jordan. Even higher education has stepped up. The German Academic Exchange Service is funding fifty scholarships in Baden-Wuerttemberg, and the World University Service of Canada sponsors ten Syrian refugees for education to our north. More than twenty different United States institutions of higher education are part of an initiative open to fund scholarships for displaced Syrian students, including Bryn Mawr, Emory University, Eastern Michigan, University of Miami, and Brown University.
Middlebury College, on the other hand, remains strangely absent. We hosted a panel on the Syrian refugee crisis, where experts from around the region — plus our own Professor Graf — spoke, yet we haven’t joined any of the initiatives proposed. And it’s not for dearth of ideas. Keith David Watenpaugh, a UCDavis human rights professor, suggests that “American universities create relationships with universities in the region where we help finance the tuition of students for a couple of years.” Allen E. Goodman, the president of the consortium of the universities mentioned above, proposes that institutions not only join the consortium to offer full-ride scholarships to Syrian refugee students, but also pay for the travel expenses and living expenses necessary to reach and then live here. Both of these are great ideas.
Middlebury College can afford to do both.
For one, we already have a relationship with a university in the region. We are partnered with the University of Jordan for study abroad. It isn’t too far of a leap to expand that partnership. If we paid for a quarter of the tuition of every Syrian refugee student enrolled at the University of Jordan, or even just a selected group, we’d only fork out $5640 per student annually. Our endowment grew by $19.1 million in the last fiscal year. Even though the financial return this year was less than it was the year before, it’s obvious we’re still rising financially, each and every year. We can most certainly afford to subsidize refugees at the University of Jordan. We can also take a stand in Allen E. Goodman’s consortium, offering full-rides to qualified Syrian refugees. The estimated total cost is $64,456 per year for tuition, board, books, living, and travel. This is based on Middlebury’s own total estimate ($63,456) plus the amount currently advertised on Expedia for a plane ticket from Istanbul to JFK and then Burlington ($563). Even if it was five times more (since let’s be honest, that’s a ludicrously low price), it’s still nowhere near the ballpark of “expensive” for an institution like Middlebury. An institution that already pays sumptuous financial aid rewards nearly equal to the price tag of covering the cost necessary for total funding of a Syrian refugee student.
As a member of the student body, I’m deeply concerned about Middlebury’s lack of leadership on this issue. We possess the funds, more than Eastern Michigan and Miami, yet haven’t acted while they have. We claim to have an “international dimension,” but haven’t acted to help relieve the largest international crisis since the Second World War. President Patton has admirably reached out to support Mizzou solidarity and the safety of students in Paris, but hasn’t addressed the refugees at all. We must urge her and her administration to. We must urge for expanding our partnership with the University of Jordan, and we must urge for the acceptance of Syrian refugees at our own campus.
If we do nothing, we distinguish ourselves as an international college without an international conscience.
